Unwritten Timeline

10/15/2013

The name for our waterborne mobile home not only describes our long term sailing plans, but was taken from a song written by a high school friend of mine, Mike Kuntz titled ﻿"The World in You"﻿. If you're in the Cincinnati area stop by The Southgate House and see him play. Tell him Dave said to play the title track to his retirement.

With the name chosen Lisa and I are still going through the more difficult process of selecting a builder for our sailboat. The current front runners are

1. AntaresAntares is currently based out of Argentina and produces around 5 or 6 boats a year. The craftsmanship and attention to detail are impeccable. Their wide range of options from furling main sails to dive equipment up to Combination Tank Fill Compressor, Reserve Tank, and Hooka System are extensive and require due diligence to decide what options best suit your needs. These are not the fastest catamarans on the market but they seem to be the best combination of comfort, safety, speed size and price for our needs.

Fountain Pajot is another boat well suited for our needs. Again it is high on comfort, safety, speed and size. One of the big advantages of Fountaine Pajot over someone like Antares is they produce different lengths of sailboats from 36' to 80'. Something like the Lipari 41'may be a better option for us. We could have a smaller boat to manage underway and in marinas and also save a few bucks by not purchasing the 4 extra feet. There are some drawbacks that are small in isolation but all together push us to the Antares. The steps are not as deep and are more steep than the Antares. The elevated open helm is also a bit of a drawback for us as well. We don't always intend to sail in perfect weather and would like a more protected helm and outside area. There are other small things as well which drops this great boat down a notch.

This is a lot of boat given the price point and still weighs in around 10,000 pounds heavier than the Antares. I wonder how well it performs in light winds given the weight and the larger wet surface. The Lagoon seems to be manufactured for mass market vacation cruises and is lacking of some of the more "comfort" or "live aboard amenities" we're looking for. You can always add aftermarket systems to any boat, but if you have problems you may end up dealing with several companies to fix a single problem linked to multiple components.

South African catamaran builder Robertson and Caine and veteran multihull designers Morrelli & Melvin teamed up to produce the Leopard 44, which is also available for charter as the Sunsail 444. Much like the Lagoon this is a nice boat that is mostly geared for the charter industry. The similar pros and cons of this boat to the Lagoon.

Unfortunately Manta actually stopped production a few years back. I know that doesn't bode well for their product. Currently John & Marge Lange are trying to secure financing to start up production again. I keep them on the list because when we first started looking into catamarans they were at the top of my list. They seemed to have a lot of what we were looking for in a boat and they were made in America. Hopefully John and Marge will be able to get the company up and running in the black before we are ready to purchase our boat so we can at least consider them again.

Like most things in life you get out of a project what you put into it. The boat selection process is not different. There are hundreds of thousands of ocean going sail boats manufactured over the past few decades. Working through all the options from construction material to what type of dingy to purchase can be overwhelming. The above snapshots only encapsulate a tiny portion of the research and thought that goes into a purchase of this type.

Check back to see which one finally wins our vote. I know we can't wait to find out!

Our first boat.

05/01/2015

We decided to purchase a used 2002 Hunter 326 Fortune's Fool. This gem was found in New Bern, NC and was in great condition. Even though we have been chartering boats for the past several years we wanted to own so we could have more opportunities for sailing and getting our skills up to par for our big adventures.